by Herman Wouk
Glowering at me from under his eyebrows, he disclosed that Speer, that very cay, had confessed to him the sabotage of his demolition orders in the past months. “You are implicated, and you deserve to be treated accordingly,” he said, in a nasty snarling tone full of the old menace. For an unpleasant moment I thought I had been summoned to be shot, as had happened to many of my comrades-in-arms, and I wondered whether Speer was still alive. Hitler went on, “However, I’ve forgiven Speer because of his service to the Reich. I forgive you because, contrary to the nature of your whole damned breed, and despite the lapses that have not once escaped me, you have on the whole been a loyal general.”
This led into the threadbare tirade on how the German General Staff had lost the war. Hitler could not converse at all. He had certain monologues which at a cue he would play out again and again, like phonograph records or an actor’s repertoire. That is why, though he had a sharp mind and a certain coarse wit, all the memoirs quite truly describe his company as stupefyingly boring.
Beginning with the assertion that he had been betrayed, let down, and doublecrossed by us ever since 1939, this soliloquy reviewed the entire war in astonishing detail, rehashing his favorite grievances against the military, from Brauchitsch and Haider to Manstein and Guderian, the whole tragic procession that had taken the blame for his blunders. His grand strategy for the war, as he described it, could not possibly have failed except for the incompetence and treachery of our General Staff. In every disagreement he had been proved right and the generals wrong; the invasion of Poland, the attack on France, the hold-or-die order in Russia in December 1941, and all the smaller tactical disputes and disappointments he treasured in his unusual memory, right down to the Steiner attack.
That is my final impression of “Hitler as Military Leader” — a maundering paranoiac in an underground shelter in Berlin which shuddered under the blast of Russian shells, explaining for the thousandth time how our nation’s catastrophe had been everybody else’s fault but his; how he, its absolute ruler who had run the war first to last, had never made a mistake.
In the document that turned up after the war as his last Will and Testament, he blamed the Jews. In this tirade he blamed our General Staff. But to the last, one thing remained perfectly clear to him: Adolf Hitler himself had never made a mistake.
My long labor draws to a close. I have, I believe, in the course of my operational analysis, given this strange historic figure due credit for his positive qualities. All writings about him tend to end in contradiction because the authors write of “Hitler” as though he were one person. But there was more than one Hitler.
The early Hitler, as I have written, was undeniably “the soul of Germany.” He fully expressed our people’s vigorous yearning for a place in the sun, and for a healthy German culture uncontaminated by the poisons of Asiatic communism, Western materialism, and the weak negative aspects of Judeo-Christian morality exposed by Friedrich Nietzsche. His domestic policies brought prosperity and tranquillity. His foreign policies brought diplomatic victories over the world’s strongest nations, our recent conquerors. When he led us to war, against the forebodings of our General Staff because we were far from ready, our nation won magnificent military triumphs. I have acknowledged his flair for adventurist opportunities in military strategy. None of this can be denied.
But at Stalingrad the later Hitler was born. This was another person, an insane monster. He more and more revealed himself as such, as adversity stripped away the glamour of the early Hitler, the protean masks he devised fell off one by one, and he dwindled to the broken jabberer I last glimpsed in the bunker.
In passing my own final judgment on the man, I must suspend the military historian’s critical detachment, and speak from a soldier’s heart.
His manner of death laid bare his character. A general may fall on his sword when the battle ends, a captain may go down with his ship, but a head of state is different. Was this the act of a head of state in wartime — to desert his office in the hour of his nation’s greatest agony; to leave his disasters and his crimes for others to liquidate; to shoot his dog, poison his mistress, and seek Lethe at the muzzle of a pistol? His apologists call it “a Roman death.” It was the death of a hysterical coward.
Napoleon in defeat behaved like a proper head of state. For two decades he had made all Europe run red with blood. Yet he faced up to his conquerors, accepted his fate, and purged France of his personal guilt. He was a soldier. Hitler was not, though he talked endlessly about his service in the trenches.
The unconscionable Nuremberg trials proved nothing but our foes’ frustrated rage at the escape of Hitler from their hands. This vengeful and unjust farce condemned a whole nation for the deeds of one vanished man, and hanged and imprisoned the generals who were honor bound to obey him. Had Hitler abdicated, let Dönitz surrender, and offered himself to the fury of the victors, such a show of dignified courage would have done much to redeem his failures. Had he done so, I would not now be writing from a prison cell; of that I am convinced. As a master demagogue Hitler tricked his way to absolute power in Germany; then, as our Supreme Warlord, he betrayed our trust.
Epitaph
We are too vigorous a nation not to recover in time. However badly we lost, the German spirit strides on. All modern military strategy, as well as the world’s hopes for an adequate energy supply, now turn on nuclear fission, a discovery of German science. Americans have walked on the moon, propelled there by an improved German V-2 rocket, in a program administered by German brains. The Soviet Union dominates Europe with its German-organized Red Army, administered on the German model. Captive German science and engineering have equipped Russia to confront the U.S.A. with intercontinental missiles armed with atom bombs.
In world politics, Hitler’s brew of nationalism plus socialism — with its revolutionary egalitarian propaganda, terror apparatus, and one-party dictatorship — is the worldwide political trend. It governs Russia, China, and most developing countries. Perhaps it is nothing to be proud of, but such is the fact. The ideas of the great German philosopher Hegel, popularized and twisted by the converted German Jew Karl Marx, are becoming a new Islam.
In the arts, the Western perverters of form and beauty only echo the avant-garde abstraction and corruption of the Weimar Republic in the 1930s. They are doing nothing now that our clever decadents did not do half a century ago, in the period of anarchy that brought on the Hitler regime.
We Germans have been the bellwether people of the twentieth century, with our triumphs and our tragedies. Though we lost our gallant bid for world empire, our great marches to the Atlantic, the Volga, and the Caucasus will shine forever in the chronicles of war.
But one historical fact we can never live down: that at the apogee of our national strength we gambled our destiny, and shot our bolt, for the sake of a common poltroon. Napoleon lies in the splendid tomb of the Invalides, a world shrine. Hitler ended as a mess of charred carrion in flaming gasoline. Only Shakespeare could write the appropriate epitaph for him:
Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE:In Roon’s view, the early “Dr. Jekyll” Hitler made it to Stalingrad. There he turned into “Mr. Hyde.” I am sure Roon meant this. Stalingrad occurred at the end of 1942. By then Hitler had led his people to commit virtually all the crimes for which the world execrates National Socialist Germany. However, he was still winning the war. He became “an insane monster,” by Roon’s lights, when he began to lose. —V.H.
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97
WHAT startled Pug Henry most was seeing the President stand up. To come on this small new man at Roosevelt’s seat in the Oval Office was itself unsettling, but Truman’s bouncy walk around a desk cleared of the familiar clutter gave Pug the queer sensation that the flow of history had left him stranded in the past; that reality was becoming dreamlike, and that this perky little “President” in a double-breasted suit and bright bow tie was some sort of imposter. Har
ry Truman shook hands briskly, told his secretary to buzz him the moment Mr. Byrnes arrived, and invited Pug to sit down.
“I need a naval aide, Admiral Henry.” The voice was tart, high, businesslike, the tone flat, midwestern, abrasive; the other American pole from Roosevelt’s creamy Harvard accent. “Now, Harry Hopkins and Admiral Leahy have both recommended you. Would you like the job?”
“Very much, Mr. President.”
“You’re hired. That does our business. Wish all the transactions in this office were that simple.” President Truman uttered a short self-conscious laugh. “Now it’s in the nature of things, Admiral, that the military and the President don’t see eye to eye on lots of things. So let’s get that straight right from the start. Who will you work for — me, or the Navy?”
“You’re my Commander-in-Chief.”
“Good enough.”
“However, if I think you’re wrong in a disagreement with the Navy, I’ll tell you so.”
“All right. That’s what I want. Just remember that the military can be wrong, too. Very wrong!” Truman emphasized his words with short chops of both hands. “Why, the day after I was sworn in, the Joint Chiefs gave me a briefing on the war. Six more months to lick Germany, they said, and another year and a half to beat Japan. Well, here’s old Hitler dead or disappeared, and surrender talks under way, and it’s been all of three weeks. Hey? How about that? Will the Joint Chiefs be just as far off about the Pacific? You’ve just come from there.”
“That sounds like an Army estimate.”
“Now exactly what does that mean? And just remember I’m a field artillery man.”
“General MacArthur projects long land campaigns, Mr. President. But the submarine blockade and the destruction from the air should make the Japs quit sooner than that.”
“Why, they’re fighting like devils on Okinawa.”
“They do fight hard. But they’ll run out of the wherewithal.”
“Without our invading Honshu?”
“That’s my judgment, Mr. President.”
“Then we won’t need the Russians’ help to finish the war out there?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
Resting both hands on the desk before him, Truman stared through glittering glasses at the admiral. Pug’s short assured answers were instinctive returns of the hard straight quizzing. He did not know how else to handle it. This man’s style was not Roosevelt’s at all. FDR would first have made or elicited some mild jokes, inquired about Pug’s family, put him at ease, and made him feel that they might chat all day. Like a new ship’s captain, Truman seemed not quite the real thing because of the change in look and manners. But no matter how long in office he would never acquire Roosevelt’s lordly authority. That seemed plain.
“Well, I hope you’re right,” Truman said.
“I can be as wrong as the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mr. President.”
“What about that big Jap army on the Chinese mainland?”
“Well, sir, you cut off an octopus’s head, and the arms go kind of limp.”
A natural smile softened the President’s stiff expression and relaxed the tight mouth. He sat back, clasping his hands behind his head. “Say, what’s the matter with those Russians, anyway, Admiral? You’ve had duty there. Why don’t they stick to their agreements?”
“Which agreements, sir?”
“Why, any agreements.”
“In my experience they usually do.”
“Is that so? Well, you’re dead wrong, right there. Stalin agreed at Yalta to hold free elections in Poland, and that’s a serious commitment. Now they’re handpicking all the candidates, so as to force in that puppet Lublin government of theirs. Figure they can get away with it because their army’s occupying Poland. Churchill’s up in arms about that, and so am I. I told Molotov just how I felt about it last week. He said he’d never been talked to like that in his life. I said, ‘Keep your agreements and you won’t get talked to like that!’ ”
Truman looked and sounded comfortable now, and quite pleased with himself. As he talked, Pug Henry had flashing memories of the devastated landscape in the Soviet Union, the trips with General Yevlenko, the ruins of Stalingrad, the burned-out German and Russian tanks, the corpses; memories too of trying to deal with Russians, of drinking with them, of hearing their songs and watching them dance. Harry Truman was a straight-shooting fellow from Missouri. He expected everybody else to behave like prosperous, unbombed, uninvaded, straight-shooting fellows from Missouri. Quite a gap. Roosevelt had understood that gap, and had bridged it long enough to win the war. Maybe nothing more was possible with the Soviet Union.
“Mr. President, you’ve got Russian experts to advise you on that. I’m not one. I don’t know the language of the Yalta agreements. With the Russians, if there’s a single loophole in the language of an agreement, they’ll drive a truck through it. That much you can count on.”
A buzzer, and a voice: “Mr. Byrnes is arriving, Mr. President. ”
Truman stood up. Again it surprised Pug. This would take getting used to. “I’m told you’ve just been married.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“I suppose you’ll want a few weeks for your honeymoon.”
“Sir, I’m prepared to report for duty now.”
Again the smile. Roosevelt’s world-famous smile had been more spectacular, but Pug was beginning to like Truman’s better. It was genuine, with no trace of condescension. Here was a simple smart man, and he was the President, after all; that showed in the confident natural smile. He was still somewhat ill at ease in the presidency, not an unlikable trait. “Well, very good. The sooner the better. Is your bride a Washington lady?”
“No, sir. An Englishwoman.” Truman blinked. “Her father was the British war correspondent, Alistair Tudsbury.”
“Oh, yes. The fat man. He interviewed me once. He stuck to the truth in that article. Didn’t he get killed in North Africa?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll look forward to meeting her.”
Playing with her gloves, Pamela was strolling along the sunny tulip beds near the old Dodge she had acquired. The uniformed White House guards were watching her swaying walk. When she waved the gloves at the admiral, they took their eyes off her. Her look was affectionate and subtly inquiring.
“Where to now?” he said. “That thing at your embassy?”
“If you’re free, darling. And if you don’t mind.”
“Let’s go.”
She drove out of the gate and around toward the north in the old too-quick way, with jerky stops and fast starts at the lights of Connecticut Avenue. The traffic was heavy, the gasoline fumes choking through the open car windows. Again the feeling stole over Victor Henry of being stranded in the past. On Connecticut Avenue what was different from 1939? Franklin Roosevelt had kept the war from this untouched avenue, this untouched capital, this untouched land. Had he been too successful? Did these contented people swarming in automobiles up and down Connecticut Avenue have any idea of what war was? The Russians knew, and the future required the toughest realism about war.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Pamela said to her silent husband, with a jackrabbit start away from a red light at Dupont Circle.
“I’d be overcharging you. Tell me again what this embassy shindig is about.”
“Oh, just a little reception. Our press corps, the British purchase mission, and such.”
“But what’s the occasion?”
“Frankly, so that I can show you off.” She gave him a sidewise glance. “Okay? Mostly my friends will be there. Lady Halifax is curious to meet you.”
“Okay.”
Pamela took his hand as she drove, and twined cool fingers in his. “It isn’t every little British popsie, you see, who hooks herself an American admiral.”
“And the naval aide to the President.” Pug had held out long enough. By now Rhoda would have asked him.
The grip on his hand tightened. “That’s what it was about the
n. Are you pleased?”
“Well, the alternative was BuOrd or BuShips again. You’ll enjoy this more. So will I.”
“How did he strike you?”
“He’s no Roosevelt. But Roosevelt’s dead, Pamela.”
Victor Henry was clearly on display at the party. Pam walked around the embassy garden on his arm, introducing him. For all the British nonchalance with which he was greeted in the sparse little gathering, the studied avoidance of stares or questions, he felt himself measured by all eyes. Thirty years ago, Rhoda had dragged her Navy quarterback to a luncheon of her Sweetbriar classmates. Some things did not change much. Pamela in her flowered frock and cartwheel hat was enchanting to look at, and her proud glow was a little comical to Pug, and a little sad. He did not think himself much of a prize; though he cut a better figure than he perhaps realized, with his South Pacific tan and his banks of battle-starred campaign ribbons on dress whites.
Lord and Lady Halifax moved genially about among their guests. Pug kept watching this tall bald gloomy man who had spent so much time with Hitler during the Munich debacle, and right up to the outbreak of the war. There he stood, this man of history, holding a glass and making chitchat with ladies. Lord Halifax caught Pug’s eye and walked straight up to him. “Admiral, I believe Sumner Welles told me about you, long ago. Didn’t you see Hitler in 1939, with the banker your President sent over on a peace mission?”
“Yes. I was naval attaché in Berlin then. I translated.”
“He wasn’t easy to deal with, was he?” Halifax said morosely. “Anyway, we’ve done for him at last.”